


Separated

by bluogreensea



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Canon-Typical The Spiral Content (The Magnus Archives), Gen, He/Him and It/Its Pronouns for Michael | The Distortion (The Magnus Archives), Michael Shelley Lives, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, but that kinda the point i guess, honest idk, thats kinda it, this will probably make no sense, well theres two of him now, yeah idk what else to put
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-21
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-13 01:53:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 20,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28895421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluogreensea/pseuds/bluogreensea
Summary: Gertrude hadn't quite known what to expect when she sent Michael into the Distortion. Perhaps, she suspected that he would become the Distortion, that the Distortion would become him.In which case, she would only be half right.The Distortion became Michael, yet Michael never became the Distortion.Now, Michael Shelley is stuck, still working back at the archives, all too aware of his other self, causing fear and pain wherever it goes, a piece of himself that he may never get back.
Relationships: Michael | The Distortion & Michael Shelley
Comments: 3
Kudos: 37





	1. Two of the same mind

_"Michael?"_

_That was it. The face he could never forget. The way she looked at him as he emerged, unsure what she was seeing as his emotions overwhelmed him, the spiral burying itself deep into his mind. He felt something roll down his face (faces?), either blood or tears or both or something completely new, he didn't check, neither of him did._

_He glanced at himself and saw himself staring back._

_"Yes?"_

\--------

The archives had gathered dust already. It hadn't been that long since it had been left, only a few days, but the dust still gathered in every corner of the room, covering each surface in a thin layer of grime. It already looked so different than it had before. Enough that the figure, spiralling through the stack of dusty files, barely recognised it as their hands brushing over piles of statements and approaching one of the tape recorders that always hunched over in the darkest corners, excitedly recording every word. In their spindly hands, they clutched the envelope, the letter already alight in one of the waste paper bins.

How strangely familiar.

With a grin, they released the envelope, letting it slowly spiral down towards the reaching flames, catching light before it hit the bottom, both letter and flame going up in a roar of light and desolation. The harsh light made the sickly yellow shadows glow with a deeper darkness, filled with stringy webs and spiders who eyes seemed a little too focused, each lonely fly trapped there completely still, waiting for the hunter to approach and end it all.

Jon glanced around nervously as he entered the vast room, eyes immediately settling on the stranger, bent over the waste paper bin, looking down on what looked suspiciously like ashes. He choose not to ask.

The figure looked up at him, shining blue eyes filled with a swirling, spiralling kaleidoscope of pure colour, spinning around and around and around until it all seemed to fold into the hypnotising pupil, barely visible in the light, faded like a picture, left out in the sun until all that remains is the memory of what should have remained. The person unfolded themselves, limbs bending and curving as the person rose to their full height, towering over Jon.

All, all at once, the figure slumped, colour draining from them, leaving a tall, smartly dressed man, long, curly blond hair falling over his shoulders in cascades. The inhuman figure Jon had seen, vanishing in a second as the man slowly approached him, limbs bending like normal, eyes a normal, plain blue.

"Y-You must be Jon." He stood before Jon, smiling weakly down at him, looking strangely apologetic. He looked up at them and nodded slowly. Up close, the figures eyes still looked like they were moving, like the irises were folding in ad in and in, continually replaced by a deep blue that didn't quite match. They smiled, teeth the colour of storm clouds. They held out their pale hand. "I'm Michael Shelley. Um, welcome to the archives? Uh, the other haven't arrived yet, or I haven't seen them at least, but, um, but I'm sure they'll be here soon."

Michael watched Jon carefully as he looked around the room, seeing his eyes, filled with scepticism, scanning everything with an air of uncaring. Yet, Michael could still feel the mark of the web practically shining out of him. He chose to ignore it, plenty of people were still sceptics, eve after encounters with the supernatural, though very few of them ended up working at the Magnus archives. Either way, he shouldn't judge. Jon must have his reasons, right?

Either way, he didn't like how he could feel the eye's gaze on him constantly as he sat down and started to get to work, grabbing one of the statement and starting to do whatever follow up he could do, though it didn't matter too much. The statement was clearly false- not someone who though they saw something but didn't, but someone who just made their story up- lied to the institute.

Michael was never sure how to feel about those statements.

He looked over and noticed Jon staring at him. He paused his work as he remembered that Jon had never been told what he was supposed to be doing. He was expecting Michael to give him instructions.

"Oh, uh, yeah, right, um. I'll do follow up on this statement and, uh, you then, uh, read it? Record it? S-sorry, I never really paid attention to what Gertrude did a-and she left a lot anyway so, uh, yeah." Jon continued staring for a moment before nodded and turning away, which didn't help Michael's growing unease as much as he thought it would, the eye's gaze was still firmly planted on him.

"Is this my office?"

"Huh? Oh, yes, it is. That room there is, uh, document storage. I think Gertrude kept a camp bed in there too? S-sometimes she stayed overnight."

Seeing that door, opened again sent a pang through Michael. How long had it been since he saw Gertrude sat in there? Longer than he'd like to admit. After... everything that had happened, he had started avoiding the archives, and her in particular. She had probably been doing the same, he wasn't sure. The last time he had seen her was when it all happened, when she had that look on her face.

One by one, the other all arrived, all either early or on time. Michael had arrived as early a he could, he had wanted some time alone there before, well, before everything started up again, just as it had done before.

He knew now, there was no avoiding it. No avoiding anything.

\--------

The colours were so bright, so bright and beautiful, so gruesome and dull and Michael couldn't tear his eyes away from them as he watched the people walk past his door, none of them giving it a second glance.

In the back of the front of his mind, he could feel a pushing pull that he recognised as the constant, gentle, ebbing, forceful tapping of his other self's cacophony of emotionless emotions. His silent laugh could be heard echoing over the quiet of the busy street, filled with people talking and cars slowly zipping past the chattering figures who looked up at the tiny, towering man, their eyes still fixed on their dark phones and the swirling street before them, ignoring the sound they didn't hear.

Then, Michael's eyes fixed on a multitude of a single figure, his unfocused eyes gliding over them, as they were unaware of the bright, shining, dull figure that followed him from its spot, unmoving. They spotted the door, hidden from sight, in the empty space right before them. The door clicked as it remained closed, letting the figure step inside as they continued down the street, walking past the door that they never hadn't seen.

Michael smiled as a frown crossed his face, his safe victim walking down the endless corridors and round the corner onto a bigger street, passing a abandoned shop, it's sky blue orange doors opening as a customer left, arms filled with the nothing they bought from the pale navy blue shop.

And Michael feasted.

\--------

Back at the archives, Michael resisted the urge to throw up as he felt the, unfortunately, familiar sensation of the distortion feeding. He held his hands out, almost expecting to see blood and, for a second, he did, until it cleared and the image of the blood covered corridors vanished. Martin glanced over, noticing his sudden panic, but Michael was too focused on the sensation of that life ending, clutched in his blade like hands.

He balled his hands into fists, feeling his short, soft, human fingers pushing into his palm. He took a deep breath and focused on the file before him, pushing the spiral out of his mind, or, rather, back into its corner of his mind the one he could never force it out of.

Not that he wanted to try too hard.

"Hey, Michael?" Martin had put his work down and slowly approached Michael, concern etched on his face. "Are you okay? You look, uh, worried?"

Michael's head shot up, his eyes dug into Martin's, briefly glowing with blinding colour, before turning back to blue as his shoulders slumped. "Uh, um, yes, I'm fine? This statement it, uh, just remined me of, um, something?" It wasn't entirely false. He was reading a statement that reminded him a little too much of the spiral, though he knew the whole story was false, the details seemed a little to familiar at times.

No one seemed to react to that, or, not the way you'd expect anyway. It wasn't uncommon for people working at the institute to have had their own experiences with the supernatural, either before or during their time there, so no one was surprised.

"Oh, okay, I can make you some tea, if that would help?"

Michael smiled, and accepted, though the idea of drinking or eating anything at that moment disgusted him, reminded him too much of his other self. Yet, despite this, he took the tea and slowly tried to sip it, trying to ignore the metallic taste of blood. He gave up and put it down, looking back up at Martin and quietly thanking him.

"So, Michael," Sasha spotted the two talking and came over to them. "How long have you worked here, in the archives?"

"Uh," Michael took another sip of his tea, the taste of blood stronger than before. "I'm not sure? There's, uh, there's a lot of, things? Here? Well, uh, no there's, um, stuff that does, uh, things and, um...yeah... I don't know? Sorry."

Sasha glanced at Martin, who shrugged. Michael watched them then looked back down at his feet, hands still clutching his quickly cooling mug of tea he couldn't even bring himself to sip again.

"Okay then."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Michael Distortion's bits are going to be so hard to write. Hopefully, it's confusing and contradictory enough. 
> 
> Also, sorry if this is too short or long or whatever, I'm not sure what's a good length for a chapter. Also, I'm not sure how often this will get updated, but I'll try to make it at least somewhat regular at least.


	2. First meeting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Michael always dreads the sight of that door, dreading even more the thing that lurks behind it.
> 
> He certainly doesn't want to have to wake up to them.

_"So, uh, where is it we're going?" Michael looked over at Gertrude. She slung her bag over her shoulder, the bag she packed for him on the table before her, looking significantly smaller._

_"Sannikov Land. In Russia."_

_He nodded slowly, eyes still nervously flicking from his bag to hers. But, he didn't question it. Why would he, after all, he still trusted her._

_Even as she plotted his demise._

\------

Michael woke up with a start. One glance at his window told him it was still too early in the morning for most people to be awake. But he didn't worry about it. He couldn't remember the last time he had gotten a "normal" amount of sleep. He just didn't seem to need it anymore. He stood up and was about to get dressed when he spotted it.

The door that had never been there before.

He sighed and walked over to it. He didn't knock, yet the door still swung open. and he looked back at himself, a wide grin on the other him's face. Both of them looked identical, the same long, straw blond hair, blue eyes that seemed to swim and spiral faster the longer you looked at them, teeth that looed to be slightly off, yet so neat and straight that you could never pick out what it was.

The only difference was their bodies. Michael was wearing plain pyjamas, his body tall and somewhat scrawny, making him seem stretched out. The Distortion was wearing clothes so bright it hurt to look at them, fingers as long as his torso, which seemed too long, and far too thin to truly look human, where Michael looked stretched out, it looked stringy enough to snap under its own weight.

"What do you want?" Michael's voice sounded dead. His usual nervousness gone, replaced by annoyance. What reason who he have to be nervous, anyway? He was just talking to himself, after all.

Those too long fingers wrapped around his waist, pulling him forwards, into something resembling a hug, though he didn't try to hug it back. The Distortion looked disappointed, though Michael knew it wasn't. He could feel it, in the back of him mind, it was just trying to annoy him, or make him feel guilty, whichever happened first.

"I'm not allowed to come and visit myself?" It did a fairly good impression of sadness. "All I wanted to do was see me."

"You wanted to annoy me. Or absorb me. I'm not going through you door. Don't try it."

"You mean your door. We are the same person, after all." It responded, happy to hear the annoyance in his voice.

"Your door, my door, our door, whatever. I'm not going through it."

Nails dug into his sides as he was once again tugged forward towards the door, but this time, he tried to fight back, pushing himself away and stepping back from the door, leaving him covered in bloody scratched that immediately healed over, disappearing as though they never existed, which they might not have.

"Can you go now, I'm trying to get dressed." 

It stepped away from the door. Well, it didn't step. It's body convulsed forwards, limbs bending, but never leaving the floor, moving it forwards in one, quick, jerky movement. Michael didn't back off, just stared at it, letting the colours show in his eyes, glowing a kaleidoscope of colours. It joined it, eyes shining brighter and moving faster, spiralling in and in and in.

The Distortion felt it first, the Eye, staring down at it. Michael jerked back, eyes turning blue as he felt its gaze on him. The Distortion laughed.

"Looks like I might have woken someone."

Michael glared at it. "We. We might be the same person, but don't include me in your "I"."

"Can't get anything past you, not now your trapped under the Eye again."

"Better than being trapped in the Spiral."

"But I'm not trapped, I'm far more free than you are. If you cared so much about freedom, you'd join me. Wouldn't it be nice to be one again?"

Michael almost laughed. Truth be told, it was all he ever dreamed for. To know he was fully himself, that he was his full self. To not have to feel his own mind, trapped and separated from himself, acting alone, without his permission, doing whatever it wanted, infected and insane. But, to merge with himself like that, would be to give up what remained of himself- to be fully something else, to finally kill his own mind.

The Distortion, of course, knew this. It knew there was no point in it, Michael would not join it, not fully, not ever, well, not willingly, at least. But annoying Michael was, by far the most fun it ever had. It could feel it, feel his annoyance, his fear in a way it couldn't with anyone else. Perhaps it wanted to feel those emotions, or perhaps it was just pure fun, it didn't know, so Michael didn't know either.

"Leave."

"Fine, fine, but I'll be back. After all, you need to pay for your rudeness. It makes me sad, you know."

"No, it doesn't."

It shrugged, convulsing back towards its door. "Yeah, it doesn't." and the door shut behind it, vanishing as though it had never been there to begin with.

\------

Jon wasn't surprised to find Michael already there when he arrived. Over the last few weeks they had been working together, he had realised Michael was always the first one in, arriving before anyone else had even began to stir. He had considered asking about it, but Michael never seemed sleep deprived, or even tired, so he never did.

Michael heard footsteps and looked up to see Jon entering. He quickly hopped to his feet, holding a pile of statements, each with follow up already done, ready to be recorded. One of them seemed to mention the Distortion, though it was from before Michael encountered it, so he couldn't be sure, though he still didn't like reading about it, no matter how brief it was, or when it was from.

It was disconcerting.

Jon briefly glanced over the statements and sighed. "Recon any of these are true? So far, almost all of them seem fake. If it wasn't for the Leitner, I would have said this place was entirely filled with lies."

Michael almost flinched as he said this, the part of his mind taken up by the Distortion telling him Jon was lying. He always hated that, yet he always forgot about it. Probably because it only did it when it really wanted to annoy him, to give him a nice, constant reminder of its presence. He could deal with it though, there were significantly worse things it could have done to him, or to those around him.

"Uh, yes, actually. The top one about Hill Top Road, well, uh, I think that one is probably true. We got a few statements about that place. At least, uh, three, maybe? That I remember."

Jon nodded, checking it quickly. "So, a group got together to come up with a story then."

Michael ignored the Distortion telling him Jon didn't believe that, which already seemed fairly obvious. "Um, I don't think that's it. Uh, One of the statement givers was, uh, he was in prison. I-I don't think he could have, well, I don't think he could have organised anything."

Jon shrugged, unable to come up with anything. And Michael didn't press it. While he understood the dangers of ignorance, better than anyone else, he also understood the blissful joy it could bring. Besides, he couldn't tell Jon. Not yet.

Elias had made that perfectly clear.

And, while he may not like the man, at all, Elias is still powerful, and its not like he'd have any help if Michael got himself into trouble, his other self certainly wouldn't help him at all. If nothing else, he was certain of that.

Perhaps that was selfish, keeping Jon vulnerable, ignorant, to save his own skin from an avatar who posed very little threat, when he thinks back on it. In hindsight, he always wished he had told Jon everything. Elias was a watcher, not a fighter, after all.

The door to the archives opened and Martin entered, carrying three cups of tea. Michael accepted it easily. This had just become part of their routine now. Michael arrives first, then Jon and then Martin, tea already made. What Michael isn't aware of is that the other two only arrived so early because they don't want him to have to be in the archives alone for too long, though neither of them has figured out how early Michael actually gets in yet.

Michael isn't looking forward to when they do.

\-------

Michael peers through the distorted glass, down to the street below, figuring out where to stand to be most visible. He smiles, seeing his own distorted reflection in the glass, fingers long and bony. He hears footsteps heading down the stairs and looks up to see a woman with long, dark hair and glasses perched on her nose. He recognises her from the glimpses he gets of his other self's life.

Sasha James.

His other self seems to like her a lot. Not to mention, she has a curiosity that the other archive assistants lack. From what he had seen, Martin was unlikely to go after him, Tim either wouldn't notice or would brush it off, Jon would convince himself it wasn't real, just a trick of the light.

She was perfect.

"Michael?"

Perhaps he had forgotten one slight detail. He wished he was able to change his appearance, but, no, he was stuck looking like a servant of the Eye, a worker of Beholding.

"Hi there, Sasha." He turned to look at her with a smile.

She hesitated, looking at him oddly, before brushing it off.

"What are you doing here? I haven't seen you around here before." She glanced at the window he had been staring out of, doing a double take when she saw his reflection in the glass. Her reflection looked normal, yet his was stretched out in all the worst places, long and stringy, fingers sharpened into claws. She looks back at Michael, the nervousness more clear on her face. "Are you doing follow up on a statement?" 

Michael almost laughed. Humans spend so much effort trying to make everything fit into their version of reality, denying what is right in front of their faces. It made it easier to pass as one of them, though it could be a bit irritating when trying to scare people. He always had to go above and beyond, twisting and turning everything until they have no choice but to be terrified.

"No. I'm not." He offered no further explanation as he started walking. She didn't follow him.

He glanced back at her. Perhaps he hadn't been acting enough like her Michael. Not that it bothered him. It didn't really matter how he got there, so long as the end result stayed the same.

"Coffee?"

She nodded, finally following him to a nearby coffee shop. They each grabbed a coffee and Michael insisted that they stay there, saying that Jon had said it was fine. She asked again what he was doing there, but he didn't answer her, instead talking about whatever came to mind, which, judging by her reactions, was even more out of character for Michael.

He didn't care, in fact, he enjoyed watching her awkwardly squirm in her seat, unclear as to what she was supposed to do. She finished her coffee quickly and stood up, apologising before starting to leave, insisting that she really had to go, and that he had to go as well, if he didn't want to be late for work.

He just grinned.

"Oh, it's fine. I'll meet you there. Just go. Don't want to make everyone wait."

She didn't like the way he spoke. Every work seemed untrue, though she knew they weren't. He looked and sounded like Michael, yet everything about him seemed so off that she was fighting the urge to run every time he spoke, like the words cut her.

She just nodded, not bothering to argue as she left, her walk turning to a sprint the moment she was out of his sight.

He watched her leave, a slight smile on his face. It seemed that, despite everything, he had gotten what he was after. 

\------

Sasha arrived at the archives late, panting slightly, her clothes slightly more jostled than normal. Michael was the first one to spot her. Jon was recording a statement and Martin and Tim were scanning through files in document storage, leaving him alone with her.

"Sasha? A-are you okay?" He approached her slightly, all too aware of the weird look she was giving him.

"How did, how did you get here, before me?"

Michael stopped in his tracks, scanning her face carefully. She knew he was always the first to arrive and she was late as well, obviously he would be there already. Unless...

"What- what do you mean?" He dreaded the answer he knew was coming and braced himself for what he knew was coming.

"You were outside my house. Did you take a cab here?"

Michael took a deep breath and looked at her, a serious expression on his face. "I wasn't outside your house. I've been here for the last few hours. You can, uh, ask Jon, or maybe Martin, or both, I guess. I, I don't even know where you live."

She blinked up at him a bit. "But it had to be you, it looked like you and it knew me."

Michael shrugged slightly, trying to calm the shaking in his hands. "I, I don't know. Uh, keep an eye out, I guess? Tell me, or Jon, if, uh, if you see...it? again."

She nodded slightly and agreed, though Michael struggled to hear her over the laugh, echoing through his mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I got this done a lot faster than I thought, probably because I'm using it to procrastinate doing anything productive. Still no idea how long these should be, so it'll probably vary a lot.


	3. Eyes and Spirals

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sasha may have kept Michael's secret, but the Distortion has other ideas.

Again, Sasha ran into the archives, eyes immediately meeting Michael's.

He gave her a questioning look and she nodded slowly. This was the fifth time she had encountered the Distortion, each time becoming more and more unusual, until she struggled to tell whether she even saw him in the first place, or if it was just her mind playing tricks on her, though she was careful not to mention that to Michael.

He still hadn't explained.

All he ever said was that he was sorry, that he wished there was more he could do for her, always asking her if she was going to tell Jon, or anyone, praying that she wouldn't, not wanting to think of how they would all look at him if they realised the truth. Each time, she responded the same. She never expected him to help, that it was okay, she was fine and that, no, she wasn't going to tell, unless he told her he was okay with it, which she knew he wasn't.

She never asked about it either. If he didn't want to tell her, she wouldn't force him to, even if her own curiosity was slowly building.

He was certain Martin noticed something was up, though, if only because he always offered both of them cups of tea, hoping to cheer them up however he could. He was so kind and trusting that, at times, Michael couldn't help but fear for him. But Jon wasn't like Gertrude. That was immediately obvious from the moment they met. He had the same want for knowledge, the same inherent curiosity that all Archivists had, but that was it.

Martin spotted Michael and Sasha stood together by the door and handed them each a cup of tea, sitting and sipping his own in silence, as had become far too normal for them. Michel sighed, placing his mug down, looking back at each of them slowly.

"I'm sorry. I should have quit when Gertrude died. I should have left when I had then chance. I just... I though I could do something. But all I do is make it worse. I'm so sorry."

Sasha glanced at Martin, taking in the confused look on his face. Michael definitely hadn't mentioned it to him. She reached out, but he shrunk away from her hand. It dropped to her side.

"It's okay. This isn't your fault. Besides, we would all be lost without you. Jon clearly has no idea what he's supposed to be doing here." She hope he would calm down at that, but instead, tears gathered in the corner of his eyes.

"It is." He didn't look at them. "Isn't it obvious. Its, its all my fault. You saw him."

Martin looked at Sasha, hoping for some sort of explanation, she opened her mouth, not sure what she would say.

She was saved the effort.

Clapping came from behind her, though the sound was weird, distorted as though the hands were too long, too big. Yet the figure she saw behind her looked normal, except for the unusually bright clothes that gave her a headache to look at, and his eyes, brighter and more painful, moving without movement, shifting without changing, and swirling without altering.

Martin's eyes fixed on the figure, taking in the features, somehow identical to the crying man stood before him. He looked between the two, noticing how Michael's eyes seemed to match the others.

"What are you doing here?"

Martin almost dropped his tea, hearing the pure venom in the voice of his nervous, timid co-worker. Sasha was more prepared, having heard how Michael spoke of the other him she had met so many times, yet even she backed off, almost afraid of the pure anger and hatred that started to spiral around the room.

The other Michael's laugh was even weirder than his claps, echoing through nothing.

"You know, you shouldn't be like that. You're scaring them, and you know what happens when we scare people."

Michael glanced at his co-workers, then back to the creature. He took a deep breath, letting his anger seep out of him. Their fear would only strengthen... something. Either the Distortion, or its master. Either way, he knew it would only help to satisfy the smiling thing before him.

"Just... tell me what you want. You came here to scare them? To annoy me?" He tried to keep his voice calm, spiralling eyes staring forwards, unseeing.

It laughed again, echoing louder, loud enough that Michael was worried the rest of the institute could hear it, before reassuring himself that they couldn't, that it wasn't real enough to be heard, nothing more than an irritating echo in the back of their minds.

However, it seemed that it was real enough for Jon and Tim to hear it.

Both of them appeared suddenly, looking for the source of the strange sound, to see the stand off between the two identical beings. Jon paled and backed off slightly, Tim looked ready to fight one of them, though he still wasn't sure which. The longer he looked at them, the more the two seemed to blur together, until he couldn't tell which of the Michael's was talking.

"You want to know why I'm here?" One of them smiled wider, neither of their mouths moving as the sound ricocheted throughout the room. "I work here."

Jon blinked, doors appearing in the edges of his vision, swimming out and into his vision. He had to focus on the two arguing Michaels to stop himself from walking over and opening one of them. But looking at them hurt his eyes, his head, every part of him started to ache, unable to get his mind around the simple scene before him and lines and shapes started to swirl across his vision.

Tim tried to ignore the tension building up in his mind, like a dam ready to burst, the longer he stood there staring. Eyes seemed to flicker across his vision, each swirling and spinning, watching. Just watching, though he could see the red around the edge of them, the way the impossible scene irritated them, the way tears gathered in them, making everything seem to distort more.

"No, you don't." Michael seemed to be the only one able to watch what was happening without that pain that pushed at everyone's minds, bodies, souls. "You aren't me. I'm not you."

"But you are." The pain doubled, tripled, as the other Michael started to smile, smile curling and swirling in every direction until it looked like every expression at once, the smile still glowing through it. "You know you are, you know I am."

"Stop it."

The words broke through it, clearing everyone's mind for a second before it all clouded over again. Michael didn't notice. His eyes were fixed on the floor, not even glancing up. His anger radiated off of him, but now it seemed grounding, something to focus on, to cling onto. The only clear emotion, the only clear thought left in that room.

The eyes around the room closed, leaving just the spiralling colours.

None of them even questioned it, all zoning in on that strand of anger, letting it flow through them with ease, too separated from themselves for something as simple as personality to restrict them. They all clamped onto it, letting it pull them through.

"Just... Just go away!"

It chuckled, not the echoing, unending laugh of before, though it still echoed through the air, but a calm, quiet laugh. Spiralling eyes seemed to scan the room and it sighed a spinning sigh.

"Fine. I've gotten all I wanted." A door opened and the creature shifted towards it. It laughed again, adding to the cacophony of silence.

"Or have I?"

And it left.

They all let out a breath, suddenly realising they hadn't breathed since the... thing had arrived. Jon blinked a few times, before passing out.

\-------

Michael wasn't surprised when he was called up to Elias' office. He glanced back at the others. Jon was still unconscious, everyone else was sat there, eyes closed, hoping that the colours would go, that their heads would stop throbbing as they tried to figure out if any of it had been real in the first place. None of them spoke.

He left without telling any of them, knowing that they would be able to focus more without him there.

He entered the office, not even bothering to knock. Elias knew he was coming, and had probably watched him coming anyway. Michael wasn't surprised to see that Elias' eyes were red and irritated, his hand held to his forehead, clearly trying to fight off that all too familiar headache. Looking at the Spiral tending to have that effect on people, even more on those connected to the eye.

He almost smiled slightly, seeing the hatred in those eyes.

Michael pushed that thought away He knew enough about the man before him to not like him, but he didn't want anyone to have to put up with the Spiral, to have to look at it, either directly, or through the eyes of others.

"A-are you going to fire me?" Michael wasn't sure if he meant that to be rhetorical or not. Either way, he knew the answer was no, Elias couldn't fire him, as much as he might want to.

Elias didn't look up at him. Perhaps calling him up hadn't been a good idea. Even glancing up at him was enough to start that aching again, to cause his eyes to water.

"No." He kept his eyes fixed on his desk, a detail that Michael noticed and tried not to smile at. If he had more control over the Spiral, he might have had a bit of fun, making the room start to spin around him. As it was, the Distortion would just take that as an invitation to come back, which was not worth it. "But, I have to ask you to try and keep that thing out of the institute or there will be consequences."

"I, uh, I am trying. I can't... I can't control it, at, at all. It, uh, it just kind of... shows up? Whenever it wants? The, uh, most I can do is, uh, well, not inviting it back. It can, uh, it can still come back if it wants." Michael grinned slightly, before forcing it back down again. "Th-though I thought you should, well, you should know that, already? O-or you could just... look into my head?"

Elias sighed, still not looking up. Looking into Michael's head was more effort than it was worth. He had enough of the Spiral in him to make it impossible to get any useful information, much less without getting another throbbing headache.

Michael suspected this and, as much as he hated the Spiral, he couldn't help but feel thankful for this. At least he didn't have to worry about the Eye peering into his mind. He hated the Eye as well. Not as much, perhaps, but it was only because of him joining the archives, creating that connection with the Eye, that everything had happened to him, so he got some satisfaction out of knowing it couldn't look into him. He could keep some information from it.

It wasn't much, but it was enough for him. For now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so I kinda just wanted to make Elias suffer and if I have to try and write about the Spiral to do that, then I will, no matter how much of a pain it can be to try and make it both confusing and understandable.
> 
> I just hate Elias.


	4. The Corruption

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neither Michael nor Martin have shown up in the institute for weeks. And, without assistance, neither of them will, each plagued with their own monsters, as their own minds turn against them.

Michael wasn’t sure what to do.

All he could do was lie there and hope for the best. From his nest, huddled in the center of his bed, he could see the occasional shift of colours and light as night changed to day and back again. Every few days, he would wonder why time seemed to be passing so fast, but he brushed it off easily. Time had been difficult, ever since the Great Twisting. It didn’t really bother him anymore.

He couldn’t remember how many doors his bedroom was supposed to have. It’s not like it really mattered though. So long as he stayed there, on his bed, and didn’t open any, it would be fine. He would be fine.

He couldn’t go back to the archives, right? He had ran away as soon as he had been let out of Elias’ office. He didn’t even say goodbye, or apologise or anything. He just ran, like a coward.

He was one, though, so that wasn’t what bothered him.

What would they all think of him? They had seen the Distortion, it would be obvious to all of them that he was a monster. He tried to push those thoughts away. To think of himself as a monster was just inviting it in, deeper into his mind. To think of himself as inhuman was just letting what remained of his humanity to slip away, what was left of his control.

He couldn’t let the Distortion, the Spiral, have control.

His phone buzzed again, quiet in the silent room, protected from the noise and movement of the outside world. He almost laughed at that thought. Perhaps, if he continued like this, he would fall to the Lonely. He would prefer that. It would protect everyone, at least.

His phone buzzed again. He couldn’t remember how long ago the first buzz had been . It could have been seconds, or days. Either way, he still gradually reached out to grab it.

His fingers wrapped around it and he flinched back, certain, for a moment, that his fingers were too long. He examined his hands carefully, turning them over until he was certain they looked normal, or normal enough.

He looked down at the glowing screen. Texts from Martin. He wasn’t surprised. Martin did seem like the type who would try to stay in contact, even after everything, even if that meant having to hide his fear.

Then he read over the texts.

Most of them were just saying that he wouldn’t be coming into work, that he was ill. Michael frowned. Why would Martin text him? The texts started a few days after Michael ran away, so he would have known Michael wasn’t in, so why text him?

Michael called him.

Martin didn’t pick up. No one did.

He tried again a few times, until he was certain Martin wouldn’t respond, even though he was still sending texts.

Michael remembered Martin’s address. He wasn’t sure why he knew it, but, either way, he still knew it, and that’s all he needed.

He pulled himself out of bed, not changing into clean clothes, before scanning each door intently, searching for the exit. He was drawn towards the one directly opposite his bed, so he ignored that one, instead reaching for the one closest to the window.

It opened into his living room.

He sighed in relief, rushing through to the front door, pausing to examine it before throwing it open and charging out.

He wasn’t sure how long it took him to get to Martin’s flat, and he didn’t care. He pressed the buzzer, hoping to hear a response, but he didn’t, so he tried another. One of Martin’s neighbours responded, and Michael explained that he wanted to check up on his frined who no one had seen in a few days.

He was happy he didn’t have to lie.

They let him in, and he rushed to Martin’s flat, skidding to a stop at the end of the hall as he spotted a woman standing outside his door. Perhaps he would have just pushed past, if it hadn’t been for the Corruption, clearly marking her and the small holes he could see, littering her body.

At the least, that explained why he wasn’t going to work.

But, that would also make it difficult for Michael to get to the door as well. The best he could do was distract it and hope that Martin would hear him and get out of there. It was an awful idea, but he wasn’t sure what else he could do.

So, distraction.

He frantically looked around, hoping to find something he could use, when his eyes settled on a fire extinguisher in the corner of the room. He could feel his connection to the eye, despite how weak it may have been, urging him to take it. He just had to hope that the Eye wanted him to save Martin.

So, he grabbed it, looking up at the flesh hive.

“H-hey!” He shouted, loud enough that Martin should be able to hear him. “Leave him alone!”

He felt thousands of tiny eyes settle on him and he almost screamed, seeing the punctured, hole riddled flesh of Jane Prentiss clearly for the first time. He hadn’t encountered the Corruption yet, though he had heard plenty about it.

He hoped that he would never have to deal with it again.

He raised the nozzle of the fire extinguisher, spraying her with it. Her worms writhed and fell, lying on the floor, unmoving as he raised it again. Now, he really had its attention, and he wasn’t too happy with it.

It started moving towards him and he sprayed it again, running around the corner, hearing the sound of the worms squirming after him.

Luckily, Martin had heard Michael’s shouts and had listened closely at the door. He could also hear the sounds of the Hive moving down the corridor, after Michael, leaving Martin’s door clear.

Slowly, he opened the door, relieved to see he had been right and the corridor was clear, except for the dead worms, littering the floor.

He slipped out, and followed the trail of dead worms, until he found Michael, still spraying it, worms still dropping dead. Michael spotted Martin and smiled, emptying the fire extinguisher before running.

Martin hid, watching Prentiss pass by, heading back to his flat, before running as well, finding Michael, waiting nearby.

“Martin? A-are you okay? Th-that thing was, uh…”

Martin smiled slightly. “Y-yeah. I’m fine. Though I can’t stand the taste of tinned peaches.”

Michael nodded slowly. Both stood there in silence for a few minutes. Then Martin spoke again.

“How did you know to come here? Did you know it was there?”

Michael reached for his phone, showing Martin the texts. Martin looked more and more confused as he read through them.

“But, I-I didn’t. That thing had-”

Michael nodded. “Y-yeah, I know. I, uh, well, you must have known I, uh, I haven’t been going in either, so, I, uh, well, I figured it couldn’t be you.”

Martin handed the phone back, looking up at Michael.

“That’s kind of a big leap to make, not that there’s a problem with that. You really saved me there.” He smiled slightly, but Michael’s responding smile was weak, overwhelmed by anxiety and worry.

“We should, uh, we should probably head back to the, uh, to the archives. Tell Jon what happened.” Michael avoided eye contact as he spoke, staring at the floor. He glanced back up at Martin, who nodded slowly.

“Yeah, we probably should.”

So, the two made their way back to the institute, despite neither of them having gone to work in weeks.

Naturally, Jon was shocked to see both of them suddenly burst into his office, covered in a thin layer of filth. He had become convinced that Martin, and possibly Michael too, had been trying to avoid working. Michael had been one of the hardest workers on the team, but that had always seemed to be more out of guilt than an actual work ethic.

Jon wasn’t sure why he had decided Michael was guilty. It could have just been that he was nervous about annoying anyone, but, no, Jon had decided it was guilt. Michael felt guilty.

He hadn’t known what about until that thing had arrived at the archives, that thing that looked like Michael but wasn’t. The way Michael reacted, he clearly knew what it was and felt responsible for its arrival, not to mention the fact that he had already run off by the time Jon woke up.

Jon also didn’t know why he was the one who had the most extreme reaction to it. The rest had headaches, but he had passed out and had stayed unconscious for half an hour.

But Jon knew Michael had the answers to his questions.

So, when he burst through the door of his office, Jon struggled to hold back the questions while Michael and Martin explained what had happened to them. It became significantly easier when he realised what had happened.

“Wait, so, Jane Prentiss went to your house?” Jon’s eyes grew wide and he stood up. “Uh, you should probably stay in the archives, you too Michael.”

Michael paled quickly. “Ah, uh, no. I’m okay. She was after Martin, not, not, me. I should, uh, I should be fine, o-outside of the institute. F-for now.”

Jo glanced over at him and sighed. He felt that Michael was probably more worried about the rest of the archives staff than himself. Perhaps the thing would come back if Michael spent too much time there?

He didn’t know, and didn’t want to find out.

\------

The Distortion watched from a place that didn’t exist, seeing it's other self fighting off the Corruption’s Hive.

It almost laughed, seeing its other self so afraid, though it hated the nagging feeling of that fear in the back of its own mind, or perhaps the front. It could never quite tell where the emotions came from, or how strong they really were, even when they felt so all encompassing that it nearly acted on them itself, nearly letting the fear that was not it's show on its twisted face.

But it never acknowledged the emotions, not really.

Just as it's other self fought to keep the Distortion at bay, fought to keep it out of his mind, the Distortion fought to keep itself true, wrapped in the lies and the fear that sustained it. To feel, to show emotion, would be to become human. To unbecome all it is and ever could be. To forfeit itself to the void of humanity.

So it did not acknowledge the emotions, it did not show them, out of fear of losing it all. Of losing itself.

How strange, for something so inhuman, so emotionless, to still fear the End the impossible coming of Terminus. It watched those who served the End Of All Things with a curiosity it could not place, fighting down the fear as it saw them kill and kill and kill, the knowledge that that was the fate that would await it too, at the end.

Yet it did not falter. It did not let that show. For to falter was to welcome the End, and it was not ready, not yet.

So, it continued to watch its other self. To see the fear and joy and sadness and nervousness and desperation and love and helplessness that it did not acknowledge, despite it's constant nagging in the back of its mind, in the front of it's consciousness.

Sometimes, it even, almost, felt bad.

Though it never knew what it was supposed to be feeling bad about. Because to understand would be to feel and to feel would to be human enough to die, to fall into that which it had come from, that which it had served and would be so abruptly severed from.

The Distortion could not feel.

The Distortion should not feel.

Yet Michael could.

And it was Michael that plagued the Distortion, forcing it closer and closer to its own doom and to the End.

And it was the Distortion that plagued Michael, forcing him further and further from all he knew and all he loved.


	5. Work day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Take your monster to work day.

Martin gave his statement to Jon. Michael didn’t give his. He wasn’t sure what his relation to the Eye was, but he didn’t think he wanted to feed it. Not to mention he knew Gertrude used to give people nightmares.

He didn’t want to have the Flesh Hive invading his dreams as well.

He wasn’t too surprised when he was suddenly handed a pile of statements about Prentiss’ victims and other Corruption related monsters. He took a deep breath before looking through them. He had become significantly less squeamish since he had learnt about everything, but the Corruption still made him shudder to his core.

He mostly just glanced over them. He just needed enough detail for follow up, not the whole story. It was still enough to make his skin crawl.

It didn’t help that he could feel eyes on him as he worked. He looked up to see Sasha and Tim quickly look away from him. Martin gave him a sympathetic look and then got back to his own work. Yet he could still feel that he was being watched. The tingly feeling of the Eye, staring down at him.

He was surprised Elias was willing to watch him, given the effects of his other self’s last visit. He wished he knew where he was looking from. He didn’t want to block Elias’ Sight, he knew that wasn’t possible, he just wanted to be able to stare back for once, see how Elias liked it.

He shook that thought off. Just because he couldn’t be fired didn’t mean Elias wouldn’t have other ways to deal with him.

After what happened to Gertrude...

He glanced over the next statement. It didn’t take him long to realise there was no point in doing follow up on it. Someone blaming their ant infestation on a curse, rather than just admitting they were unhygienic.

Michael didn’t mind the fake statements too much. A bit annoying, but at least he knew he didn’t have to worry about anything in them. He sighed, noting down the dates and events to follow up on.

Martin offered him tea, and he accepted, happy to have something else to distract him from the eyes that followed his movements. He sipped it carefully, scrolling through housing records. And he hoped that it would just be a normal day at the archives. If that was even possible.

Jon came out to grab another statement to record, looking at Michael with something he hoped wasn’t actually suspicion, though it was the only thing that he could think of.

Tim and Sasha worked, though their eyes would occasionally glide over to him. He couldn’t figure out what Tim was thinking, but Sasha was clearly worried. Michael briefly considered that she might be worried for him, rather than because of. Either way, he knew it was because of his other self.

\-----

Its door opened into the tunnels. It had discovered them soon before Gertrude died, having watched with a twirling grin on its stretched face as Elias had dragged the body down there. The place had always drawn it. Tunnels, stretching and shifting and changing, unable to be navigated without help, and even harder to understand.

An almost perfect copy of himself, formed by human hands.

The Distortion loved it.

He probably would have loved it more if it hadn’t been for the worms that had started to invade it. It pushed away the squeamishness that rose up inside it, instead trying to smile at the scene before it.

If he got lucky, the Flesh Hive might kill Michael in its attack. That would certainly get rid of a lot of problems. For one, it would finally be freed from the restraining humanity that had been forced upon it.

How strange, for a creature to dream of freedom in such a way, to hope, to long.

Sometimes, it explored the tunnels, seeing what it could find, how far it could travel from it's door, from itself. It batted away spiders, their webs lining the tunnels, stepped over piles of silver worms, wriggling away from his reaching fingers, it passed piles of human litter, hidden in the darkest corners of the tunnels, sometimes, it even caught a glimpse of the person who left it, before he vanished again, into the darkness, leaving it wondering if he had ever really existed.

It saw stairs, leading deeper into the Earth, but it never travelled down them, already feeling the crushing weight of Choke. Sometimes, there were stairs leading upwards to trapdoors, some were even real. Dead ends and twists and turns and paths, spiralling inwards so gradually it didn’t notice until the impossible light began to sputter and die.

Some tunnels smelled, of rot and death and true, undeniable freedom. Freedom from everyone and everything. It didn’t walk these paths. Nor did it walk the ones that seemed to call to him, screaming for his attention, nor the ones that seemed to watch him, patient and waiting.

It did walk those that seemed to bend at unnatural angles, to twist in on themselves, yet never changing in shape or size, the ones that seemed to glow with a light that may have just been it's imagination, or may have been it's doom.

It stuck to the tunnels it knew, that it recognised as its own, as maddeningly impossible and simply understandable. It stuck with its own kind.

Then, it returned to its own tunnels, its own corridors, it's own swirling, branching pathways and impossibility. It opened its own door and wondered back inside, mind racing with the tunnels it never wanted to leave.

With a burning curiosity it wished it could ignore.

It sighed, moving it's door out of the tunnels, searching for its next victim.

\-------

Michael stopped to grab two teas on his way to the archives. He knew Martin usually made his own, but he also knew he would probably appreciate the gesture anyway. He just wanted to show Martin that he cared, even if that was the only way he was able to do it.

Martin was still asleep when Michael arrived. Not unsurprising. Though Michael had started arriving later to avoid waking Martin too early, he was still getting in far earlier than anyone would have expected. From an outside point of view, it probably looked like he enjoyed his job. He really didn't, but at least he had only encountered two monsters so far.

He knew it was probably just that the rest were waiting to find out how dangerous Jon was before attacking, but that didn’t bother him too much. That was a problem for the future, as it was, he could live his life with a false sense of security.

He glanced down at the sleeping man, unsure if he should wake him up or not. He didn’t want to wake him too early, but also knew he probably wouldn’t want to wake up to a cold cup of tea or to all of his coworkers already there.

He glanced up at a clock and sighed, placing the tea by Martin’s bed and standing up to leave, noticing the glint of something silver in Martin’s hand.

A corkscrew.

Michael almost winced at that. One encounter with the Corruption was already enough for Martin to feel the need to keep the corkscrew with him, even as he slept, yet it wouldn't be the worst he would see. Not by a long way.

He wondered if Martin had ever encountered the entities, before he joined the archives. He knew Jon had, and suspected Tim had too, judging by the books on clowns and circuses he was always taking out of the library, but Martin had always seemed calm in a way Michael couldn’t help but associate with ignorance, until now, that is.

He turned away, trying to banish that thought from his mind. Ignorance wasn’t a good thing, he knew that, yet he missed it more than he could ever admit. He wanted, more than anything, to go back to the time where the monsters had just been stories, where Gertrude had just been a weak old woman, where he didn’t have to worry that he could lose everything, even his own identity, to things he didn’t fully understand.

Ignorance was bliss, but it was also the thing that almost brought about his end.

If he had even been ignorant to begin with. He had seen so much during his time at the institute, most of it being explained away by Gertrude or Emma, both wanting to keep him in the dark. He couldn’t ever be sure if he believed them. He always said he did, that he did believe the statements were just stories, no truth to them.

But he knew that wasn’t true, even then. Even then, he was marked by the Spiral.

But he let them lie, let himself believe. Because it was easier. To ignore the truth until it stared him in the face, with his own eyes.

“Michael?”

The voice snapped him out of his thoughts and he turned to see Martin, sat up and staring at him, tea in hand.

Michael tried to give him a smile, though it came out as more of a grimace, Gertrude’s face still flashing through his head, the cold expression she gave him as he crossed the Distortion’s threshold. Then the disgust as he exited again, fighting off the thoughts that he knew weren’t his. 

He blinked, pushing the face away and looking at Martin, only noticing then that Martin wasn’t focused on him at all.

Michael knew what he was going to see before he turned.

Where shelves had covered the wall, a door now stood, the shelves that had once been there having vanished, their contents now covering the floor. The door was a dark yellow, patterns seeming to swim out of its surfaces, before phasing back through the door to the corridors Michael knew where on the other side.

And, on Michael’s desk, only a few feet in front of him, was his other self, grinning in a way that made Michael’s head ache.

“Hi!” It waved slowly, it's arm seeming to lag behind itself and splutter with colours that weren’t there. It's legs seemed to go on forever, it knelt down on them, yet Michael could still see them going under the desk, making it impossible to figure out what position it was sat in, or if it was even sat down to begin with.

It seemed to glitch out of reality, disappearing and reappearing with flashes of colours that Michael had never seen before. It's fingers clutched the side of the desk, digging into the wood that looked too soft, bending under the Distortion’s weight and sagging as though it were made of playdough.

“Could you stop doing that to my desk? I need to use that.” Michael sighed, placing a hand on his desk and pulling it back, the wood still stuck to his fingers. He flicked his hand, the wood easily unsticking and flinging across the room.

The Distortion seemed to glance down at the desk and grinned. “Sorry, I thought it was supposed to look like that?”

“Just change it back.”

It pouted, standing up. The desk seemed to bend back to shape as it moved and it seemed to giggle slightly, watching Martin as he rubbed his eyes, looking anywhere but at the mess of impossibility, molding Michael’s desk back into shape.

“Thank you.” Michael didn’t look away. The Spiral didn’t bother him anymore, especially not with something as simple as changing the consistency of wood. “Are you leaving now?”

It paused to think, then shook its head, or that was probably what it was, the jagged motions of it's head, smoothly swinging, made it difficult to tell what it was trying to do.

“Hm, no, I don’t think I will.” It probably shrugged. “I think I might stick around for a while. Just get on with your day. Pretend I’m not even here.” It laughed slightly. “Though, I suppose, I’m not really here anyway, so that should be easy.”

Martin looked at Michael, still staring at the swirling mass of colour and indistinguishable facial expressions. Michael sighed and sat down at his desk.

“We can’t make it leave. If it wants to stay, then we have to deal with it. So long as it doesn’t start reshaping any of your stuff, it should be fine.” Michael glanced at the mess on the floor around the door, then back to the Distortion. “Could you also move your door? And maybe clean up those files?”

\------

The Distortion found a strange kind of amusement of watching Michael scurry about the archives, going about his working day. It watched him with an innocent grin on its face as he cleared up the files it had left on the floor, trying to find another shelf they would fit on. As it turned out, there wasn’t one, so Michael had to leave them piled on the floor, ready to be moved as soon as the Distortion chose to leave.

Martin gave it a wide berth, sticking to the walls of the room every time he had to pass by it, and getting Michael to fetch files that were too close to its door. He was happy that he had gotten the desk furthest from Michael’s, which the Distortion had taken to sitting on or around, often peering over Michael’s shoulder, which led to it having pens flicked at its face.

Michael never did get those pens back.

The others didn’t seem too keen on the idea of having the Distortion lazing about in their workspace, least of all Tim, whose desk was right next to Michael’s, leading to it peering over his shoulder as well, whenever Michael stood up to get more pens.

But, it wasn’t altering any of their stuff, even if they sometimes thought it had, and it wasn’t actually doing anything to slow or stop their work, so they couldn’t complain too much. It was just being a pest, which was annoying, but they could deal with it at least.

Michael went home that day, more exhausted than normal. He dumped his stuff by the door, only quickly glancing at the new door by the TV, and went straight to bed, ignoring the way his ceiling seemed to spin and spiral.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I finally made a plan for this story. I kind of rushed in, just wanting to write stuff with Michael, but I have an actual plan now and this story is going to get interesting, and probably quite difficult to actually write.


	6. Skin and fur

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Melanie makes her first trip to the institute.

Melanie wasn’t sure what exactly she had expected. An institute that worked with the supernatural was bound to be weird, but she had expected at least some façade of normalcy, that they would at least try to keep the more obviously supernatural away from the public.

Instead, she had walked down into the archives only to be greeted by a man she knew couldn’t possibly be human.

He was twirled around a desk, statement in hands, which he read through quickly, fast enough that Melanie had to check he only had two eyes. Or she thought that was why she checked. Maybe she had seen more, she couldn’t be sure. She couldn’t be sure about anything with the man.

He looked up at her and her vision swam for a second as she stared back into his two(?) eyes. He moved to his feet, and she wasn’t sure if his odd movements were from her swimming vision of his endless limbs.

“Hey, stop it.”

Someone shouted across the room and all at once, the sensation stopped.

She looked up to see a man who looked almost identical to the inhuman creature before her. But he was human, she could tell, somehow. He just seemed so grounding that she couldn’t bear to question his humanity for more than a moment.

He smiled nervously, looking up at Melanie, though he continuously glanced back at the monster next to him.

“I’m so sorry about him. We, uh, we’ve been trying to… persuade, uh, him to leave but, well, he won’t. Oh, uh, I’m Michael. J-just call him… uh… actually, m-maybe best not to call him anything.”

The creature laughed, wrapping its pointed fingers around Michael’s shoulders, who didn’t even try to shrug away, though he was clearly uncomfortable with the touch.

“Why would I leave?” Its voice made Melanie’s ears ache, followed by a pounding thobe in her head. “After all, it's so fun watching you run about in your archives. You’re like little mice. Perhaps I should go find a cat, see what happens.”

Michael flinched away from it, its hands dropping to its sides and it frowned, though its joy could be seen clearly in its shining eyes.

“P-please try and, uh, ignore him. Uh, did you... come to make a statement?”

Melanie kept her eyes on the creature, still put off by its constant grin that seemed to stick despite whatever facial expression it may be showing. “Uh, yes. I came to make my statement.” It looked disappointed at that, in a way that somehow made Melanie think of a predator that just lost a meal.

“Okay, then. I’ll go get Jon. I-if you want to record it, i-if you don’t I can, uh, probably find some paper?” He glanced up at her. “A-actually I’ll probably need to tell Jon anyway, so, uh, I’ll go get him.”

He quickly hurried away, entering an office on the other side of the room, leaving Melanie alone with the Distortion.

It looked down at her and smiled, it's eyes seeming to stare right through her, fixed on something inside her. It’s smile seemed to grin as it leaned into her, speaking quietly.

“It makes you realise, doesn’t it? How much skin you have.” It turned to her with a grin that seemed to twist in on itself. “You have quite lovely skin. I’m sure they would love to wear it.”

Melanie froze, the words echoing in her mind as she tried to understand them. They seemed so simple, yet so complicated, as though there were layers upon layers of inferred details, knowledge she didn’t have, secrets she had never told.

She would have punched it if Michael hadn’t entered the room, a new, and rather tired looking, man following him.

She was happy enough to leave Michael with the creature, even if she did feel a bit guilty about it. He could probably manage it, he did say that that thing had been hanging around for a while.

Michael watched her leave, waiting until Jon closed the door before turning to the Distortion.

“I thought you agreed not to do anything to statement givers.” He crossed his arms, staring into his own eyes.

The Distortion shrugged. “I remember promising not to do anything to anyone I knew was giving a statement. She should have made her intentions more clear, then I wouldn't have done anything.” It grinned slightly. “And she’s a ghost hunter, so she should be able to deal with a little Spiral.”

Michael scanned it's face. He sighed. “Of course you recognise her. It's interesting though. Melanie King, ghost hunter, finally finds a real one.”

“I don’t think she’d like hearing you say that. She seems like an angry one. If we’re lucky, she’ll fall to the Slaughter. Looks like finding a cat was easier than I expected.”

Michael sat down at his desk, throwing a pen over his shoulder. It hit the Distortion in the face and slowly sank into its rippling flesh.

“Don’t do anything to her. She’s a statement giver now.”

Michael opened a file and started reading through it as The Distortion wraps itself around his desk, head balanced on his shoulder, allowing him to look at the file as Michael flipped through it. Michael tried to shrug it off but gave up quickly, just focusing on his work.

The first indication he got that Melanie had finished giving her statement was the Distortion unwrapping itself from around him and wandering over to her.

Michael didn’t even look up. “Leave her alone. Statement giver, remember.”

“You're no fun.”

“You’re a pain.”

He placed the file down, shooing the Distortion away and grabbing a form to give to Melanie.

“Just, uh, fill in your name and contact info and we’ll contact you... if... if we find anything.”

She snatched it out of his hand and filled it in quickly, dropping it down on his desk, before leaving, not saying a word.

“Asshole boss strikes again.”

“Shut up.”

\------

Michael never quite figured out why the Distortion chose to keep the promises it made, though it did make his life easier. It did have a tendency of finding loopholes, but Michael didn’t want to complain too much, in case it changed his mind and disregarded them entirely.

One of those rules was that it would stay out of the rest of the institute. Michael really didn’t want to have to explain his strange new pet to anyone else.

Luckily, Jon seemed to have also relaxed some rules for Michael, and didn’t mind him spending a bit more time out on break, or in the library. The Distortion would still be in the archives, though it would be significantly calmer than usual, at least.

Michael was sitting in the cafeteria, slowly eating his food, trying to drag out the time a bit longer before he had to head back into the archives. The Distortion had spent the morning flashing like a disco ball, which was really quite distracting.

Someone placed their plate down next to him. Tim grinned, though Michael could see the irritation seeping into his features. Anyone would get annoyed with the Distortion hanging over their shoulder all day everyday. Michael was somewhat looking forward to the day Martin snapped at it, not that he would have told anyone that.

“You look tired, are you getting any sleep?”

Michael didn’t meet Tim’s eyes, staring down at his plate. “A bit, I guess?” He hadn’t slept for weeks. He was starting to think he didn’t need to anymore. That he hadn’t since the change, and he’d just been trying to keep something normal in his life. 

“That new cat must be a real pain. Sounds absolutely cat-astrophic.”

Michael didn’t mind Tim’s habit of referring to the Distortion as a cat. They were similar enough at times. The cat puns, however…

“Y-yeah, fur real, it's claw-full. I, uh, I get the feline it's going to take a while to deal with hiss im-paw-sible cat-itute, purr-happs fur-ever.”

He couldn’t let Tim beat him.

Tim cracked first. He burst out laughing, looking at Michael with pleasant surprise. Michael tried to keep a straight face but couldn’t, joining Tim with a cheery laugh. Tim couldn’t help but feel relieved at the happy, human laugh.

“Wow,” He tried to speak, still shaking with laughter. “I didn’t realise you had that in you. Absolutely hiss-terical.”

Michael gave the biggest smile Tim had ever seen from him, a cheeky grin that made him more curious about the strange man than he had ever been before. But not because of the strange being that seemed to follow him, but because he truly wanted to get to know him, to see what else he had in him.

They both finished their food, heading back to work, though they couldn’t meet each other’s eyes without bursting out laughing, made worse by the Distortion’s questions as it sat there, wrapped around Michael, tilting its head as it examined the two of them, eyes wide with feline curiosity.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just love the idea of them treating the Distortion like a badly behaved cat, okay? Just let them have their pet Spiral monster.
> 
> Also, Michael is the king of puns, I don't make the rules.


	7. Regret

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Michael gets caught up in memories he has grown to regret.

Michael was starting to understand Martin’s panic.

He’d lost track of the amount of worms he’d seen on his way to work, he couldn’t even tell if it was more or less than the amount he’d seen, squirming about the archives as he tried to work. Jon had told him off after he saw one half way through recording a statement. He had to rerecord it, without the scream this time.

Which would have been a lot easier if The Distortion hadn’t been trying to scare him the entire time.

He managed to rerecord the statement, with only a few background sounds from the Distortion, though Jon couldn’t blame him for those.

He started putting everything back, statement with tape on the shelf, recorder on Jon’s desk, and sat back down at his desk, before spotting a shining silver worm under Martin’s desk. They were everywhere. And he didn’t like the implications of that.

He had hoped it would be longer before something decided that the archives looked like a nice target. They must have all been waiting until Gertrude died. He hadn’t really paid attention to the supernatural and her, but he knew enough to know that a lot of people were terrified of her. He had even felt apprehension from the Distortion at times.

He hadn’t noticed anything with her, now he thought about it. He was always either too focused on the weak old woman to notice who she really was, or was too focused on staying away from her to notice anything.

The closest he’d ever got was through second hand accounts, through brief conversations with people who worked for her, never stopping to chat for long from fear that she might walk in and he would have to see her again.

How had he allowed her to have such an impact on her life?

He allowed her to ruin the few possible friendships he had, without her even being there…

\------

_ Michael peered through the door to the archives. Rosie had told him that Gertrude was off on her lunch break, though that didn’t make him feel any better. All he needed was to grab some statements and leave before she returned. He could do that. _

_ Satisfied he couldn’t see her anywhere, he entered the archives, leaving the pile of statements he had taken last week on the desk, follow up already done and tucked into the files. _

_ “Who are you?” _

_ Michael froze at the voice. It wasn’t Gertrude’s, always a good start. But he didn’t know it either. Was someone giving a statement? He should have asked Rosie before walking in. If there was a statement giver, then Gertrude would come back sooner and… _

_ “Who are you?” They asked again. _

_ Michael turned, eyes fixing on a figure in the corner of the room, holding a statement. It was a man, long black hair tied out of the way, one pale, tattooed hand, holding the handle of a knife, just visible through the folds of his long, leather jacket. _

_ The man met his eyes and they widened, taking the knife out, showing it to Michael with a hardened glare. _

_ “What does the Spiral want with those statements?” _

_ Michael just stared. Trying to unravel the man’s words. The Spiral. The man could see his connection to it, and thought he served it. _

_ On instinct, he reached up and rubbed his eyes, as though hoping he could wipe away the colours that filled them. He couldn’t, of course. But it still blocked his eyes for long enough for him to try and calm down, to get rid of the fear that made them glow bright enough to blind. _

_ The man was still waiting for an answer. _

_ “I, uh, I’m M-Michael, uh, Shelley. Michael Shelley. I-I’m an, uh, an archival assistant. Here. I just, I needed statements for, uh, follow up. And I don’t serve the Spiral. A-are you giving a statement?” _

_ The man narrowed his eyes, scanning Michel. Judging by the eye tattoos covering his body, he probably served Beholding. Michael just had to hope that was enough for him to know he wasn’t lying. _

_ “Gerard Kaey. I’m not giving a statement.” _

_ Michael sighed, seeing Gerard put the knife away, setting the statement he was holding down on the nearest desk. The one that had once been Eric Delano’s. Now he thought about it, Gerard looked like him, somehow. _

_ “Oh, uh, okay then. D-did you need anything? I mean, I-I can’t stay long but, uh, I can probably do… something?” Michael kept looking at the statements around him. All he was trying to do was grab some of them and go. This was slowing him down, and he needed to be gone. _

_ Gerard shrugged. “I’m just waiting, so some conversation, I guess? Gertrude isn’t exactly the talkative type.” _

_ Michael nodded, as though he actually knew enough about the woman who called herself his boss to know that. He really didn’t know her at all. _

_ And he was fine with that. _

_ “Uh, okay, then. How do you know Gertrude?” Michael regretted it the instant that it came out of his mouth. He didn’t want to have to talk about her. Any other question would be fine. Why did he have to start with that one? _

_ Gerard moved to sit down on the nearest desk, and Michel couldn’t help but, once again, compare him to Eric Delano. He had barely known the man, yet he could still remember his face. _

_ “Y-you wouldn’t happen to be, uh, related to Eric Delano?” That was probably a better conversation starter. He really didn’t want to talk about Gertrude. _

_ Gerard nodded. “Yeah, he was my dad, never met him though.” _

_ Okay, maybe not a good conversation starter. _

_ “What about you? How’d you get connected to the Spiral?” _

_ Michael glanced at the clock. He had been there too long already, he really needed to go. He hadn’t even picked which statements he was taking yet. He shouldn’t be talking to this stranger. He should be leaving. Now. _

_ “G-Gertrude’s plan to s-stop the Great Twisting. She, uh, well, she kind of fed me to the Distortion.” He was still scanning the statements, not taking his eyes off of them. “I-I came out alive, b-but with an, uh, an annoying look alike.” _

_ “You got spiralised.” _

_ Michael looked at Gerard, who sat there, a serious expression on his face as he looked back at Michael. Michael felt a smile break out across his face and he nodded. _

_ “I guess I did.” _

_ Gerard laughed. It was warmer than Michael had expected, though he wasn’t surprised. People didn’t often fit into your expectations. Don’t judge a book by its cover, but still check for library plates before you read it. _

_ Michael glanced at the door, then at the clock. He really,  _ really  _ needed to be going. He probably wasn’t getting any statements today. He would need to come in again tomorrow. He wasn’t going to be getting any work done tonight. _

_ But that didn’t matter, all that mattered was getting out of there before Gertrude returned. _

_ If Gerard noticed his nervousness, he didn’t comment on it. _

_ “I-I’m sorry, but I need to go now. Well, I’m already kind of… late? I guess? S-sorry, Gerard.” Michael reached to grab a statement from the nearest shelf, glancing at the one Gerard had been reading. He left it. _

_ “Just, call me Gerry.” _

_ Michael looked back at Gerry and smiled slightly. _

_ “Oh, okay, then. Uh, I’ll see you around, Gerry.” _

He didn’t.

Michael always kept an eye out for Gerry, even just so he could give him a better warning about staying away from Gertrude, and the archives in general. He saw him once or twice, but it was always with Gertrude at his side, so Michael never did talk to him.

And it was only a few months later that Michael got the news, that Gerard Kaey had been taken ill and died.

He never looked into it further.

Now, Michael looked down at the statement in his hands. Some builders had found passages below some old building and Gerry had been the one to stop them from doing anything stupid and suicidal.

He also had Gerry’s autopsy report, lying on his desk, waiting to be opened. And Michael wasn’t sure he wanted to open it.

He didn’t know Gerry, they had talked once, and only for a few minutes, but he was a reminder of everything. Of how he allowed Gertrude Robinson to control his life, even when she wasn’t in it. How he allowed his own fear to control him, and to take anything he could have enjoyed before he had the chance to.

A reminder of everything he hated about his past self.

He closed the statement, placing it on Martin’s desk. Martin looked up at him with confusion.

“S-sorry, but could you, uh, look into this one? I, uh, I knew someone involved. He was a… friend?”

Martin took it, as well as the autopsy report and, of course, offered Michael a cup of tea, which he quickly accepted. Martin rushed off and Michael turned back to the pile of statements to look into, taking the one on the top of the pile, trying his best to ignore how the Spiral surrounded it, swirling and spinning around his fingers and the paper clutched in them.

Martin returned with the tea, handing it to Michael.

“Oh, Michael?” Michael looked up from his tea, trying not to cutch it too tightly. “Do you know anything about that weird table that was delivered?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I kinda just wanted an excuse to write about Gerry, and I thought this would fit well. I'm really exited to continue this. Things are about to get interesting.


	8. Worms

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Distortion being strangely cute.
> 
> Also, worms.

Martin woke up earlier than normal.

The archives were darker than normal, without the sunlight slanting in through the small windows. The lights, however, were already on. He wasn’t surprised. It wasn’t exactly unusual for someone (usually Michael) to already be in by the time he woke up.

He dragged himself out of the small camp bed, hidden in the far corner of document storage, putting on his glasses and glancing at his phone.

5am.

He looked back up at the light shining through the window in the door. Michael didn’t get in this early, right? He couldn’t, Martin would have noticed. He grabbed a blanket, wrapping it around himself, hoping that whoever was in had turned the heating on.

He paused, taking the corkscrew from under his pillow.

And he turned to the doors.

Glancing through the window, he couldn’t see anyone. He couldn’t see any worms either, but he still tightened his grip on the corkscrew, holding it ready. The metal was warm, heated up from being clutched to his chest all night, the warmth all too familiar to him.

Finally, he pushed the door open, shrinking into himself, hoping whatever was there wouldn’t notice him, wrapped in a fluffy blanket.

He looked around. The Distortion was on Michael’s desk, wrapped around something, blocking in from view. All Martin could see was the swirling of colours that made his brain hurt, and a pair of impossibly bright eyes booking out of the swirling mass of limbs and fabric.

He loosened his grip on the corkscrew. Somehow, the Distortion had managed to become something normal in his life. Seeing it had almost become a comfort to him. But he didn’t let go, not yet. The Distortion was still a monster, despite the comfort it brought.

But what was it doing here? It usually arrived at the same time as Michael, or just after. And he couldn’t see Michael anywhere. He hadn’t heard anything either.

Then, there was the thing it was covering.

“My my, someone’s up early.”

It’s voice was softer than normal as well, as though it were trying to whisper, yet the words were still clear in Martin’s mind, despite the lack of a visible mouth, or anything that could be a mouth.

“Is Michael here?” The Distortion’s door was in the opposite wall, slightly ajar. Martin peered into the darkness, hoping that Michael hadn’t gone inside. He wouldn’t do that, right?

The Distortion shifted, a gap appearing in the spiraling shell, revealing long, curly hair, and a pale blue jumper.

Michael, asleep at his desk.

The gap closed again, Michael, once again, fully covered by the Distortion, which looked up at Martin with something that had started to resemble a face. It even almost had a facial expression, though Martin wasn’t going to even try and figure out what it was supposed to be. He’d go insane first.

“Oh, uh, any particular reason why you’re-”

“No, not really.”

“Okay then.”

Distortion didn’t let Martin near Michael when he asked. Even when he offered a blanket, the Distortion just reached out a hand and dragged the blanket into itself, rather than letting Martin do it. He offered to get a pillow, but it wouldn’t take it.

If Martin had thought the Distortion had emotions, he would have called it protective.

But, he had seen enough to know that wasn’t true. That Distortion annoyed them and got in their way. It didn’t care. It couldn’t.

After a while, he gave up and headed back to bed, then spent the next few hours trying to get back to sleep.

\-------

Michael wasn’t quite sure what to think when he opened his eyes.

All he could see was colour, surrounding his body. He raised his head, seeing the normal, brown surface of his desk. He was sitting on his chair, but, other than that, he seemed to be floating in a technicolour void.

Two eyes appeared before him, the corners turned upwards as though in a smile. They looked him over, though seemed to fix on his eyes, narrowing slightly.

“Finally awake, are we?” His own voice asked, echoing in the small space.

He looked up at the Distortion’s eyes, gently running his own, unsure if he was able to stretch or not.

“Where am I?”

The tendrils of colours retracted, leaving Michael’s head hurting with the sudden change. He saw the dark brown of the archives, the white and yellow of statements. He must have fallen asleep at work.

The Distortion had returned to something that resembled a human. It was sat on his desk, though it's long limbs still seemed to spiral around it.

“I think you might want to have a chat with Jon. He was saying something about using company time for napping.” It smiled innocently, eyes swirling wildly.

Michael sighed, putting his head back on the desk, wishing he was able to sleep more.

“Oh, and there was something else. Everyone seemed to think it was fairly important, though I can’t for the life of me remember what it is…” It tapped it's chin, clearly waiting for Michael to ask.

He slowly raised his head. “And what would that-”

“Michael!”

Michael heard a door slam open and raised his head, looking up at Sasha, stood in the doorway to document storage. She looked panicked, her eyes fixed on something behind him.

The Distortion laughed, it's laugh echoing around the room, filled with bloody joy that set Michael’s teeth on edge. He glanced back at it, seeing it grinning wider and wider, teeth spiking into points.

Sasha ran over to him, grabbing his hand and Michael turned to her, focusing on the fear covering her face as she looked back at whatever it was that stood behind him.

Whatever he was, he didn’t want to look.

He didn’t want to see it.

The Distortion carefully walked over to its door, set into the far wall. It looked back at them and grinned. “I would run, if I were you. Which, I suppose, I am.” Its door opened itself and it walked inside.

“Run, little Michael, run.”

Its words continued to echo, even as the door vanished, leaving Michael alone with Sasha and the creature that smelt of rot and disease.

Of Corruption.

Sasha dragged him to the nearest door, thankfully not the Distortion’s, and the two of them ran through, into the corridor that led to the rest of the institute. They turned back to the door, briefly considering barricading it, but not wanting to trap the others.

“Sasha, where is everyone?”

Sasha didn’t have time to think that this was the first time she had heard Michael talk without stuttering. She turned away from the door, searching the walls.

“Jon and Martin are in document storage, Tim is on his lunch break.” She spotted a fire alarm on the far wall and started to march towards it. “But he’ll be coming back soon, so one of us will need to stay to tell him what’s happening.”

Michael nodded, and Sasha set off the fire alarm.

“So, one of us stays here, the other finds Elias?” Michael didn’t want to have to rely on Elias, but he knew that he must have something prepared for the attack, even if he had let it happen in the first place.

Sasha nodded. They could hear the sound of rushing footsteps over the sound of the fire alarm, the sound of the rest of the institute running, getting out of the building. Michael smiled slightly. At least everyone else would be safe.

They wouldn’t have to get more involved than they already had.

“Okay, then, I’ll stay here.” Michael said. He didn’t want to have to see Elias, and he knew Sasha would be able to explain everything.

Sasha nodded, glancing back at Michael before running up the stairs to the rest of the institute.

Michael watched her leave and turned back to the archives. He knew he couldn't fight the Flesh Hive, he knew he couldn’t do anything, but he didn’t want to have to stand there, waiting for Tim to show up.

He grabbed some paper from a nearby table, writing a short note and placing it on the door, where Tim was bound to notice it before he entered the archives. He glanced back at the stairs, hoping that there had been enough time since Sasha had left, hoping that he wouldn’t run into her without Tim.

He took a deep breath and ran up those stairs, unsure where he was going, trying to listen to the parts of his brain he knew wasn’t his, not anymore.

Something was pulling him up the stairs, into a room at the back of the institute. He didn’t know what called him, only that something was calling him, dragging him in with a long, spindly had wrapped around his neck.

He just had to hope it was the Eye calling him, rather than the Spiral.

He pushed open the door and entered the room, looking around at the shelves surrounding him, covering the walls.

He moved past a table in the centre of the room towards a door he saw on the far side of the room, the thing that called him.

He sighed.

Of course listening to that part of his mind would lead him there. Where else would the Spiral, where else would the Distortion, lead him, other than to its threshold?

He could almost hear it's laughter, despite the silence that covered the room, the silence that not even the screaming fire alarms outside could break. Or perhaps that was just the Spiral messing with his mind, as always. Making him hear things that weren’t there and stopping him from hearing things that were.

He sighed, trying to ignore how he could still feel the pull and turned to leave the room. Ignoring the pull hurt, like he was having to dig it's hooks out of his mind, having to fight the hand that wrapped around his neck.

He ignored the figure standing by the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is the Distortion overprotective or just a bitch? We'll never know.


	9. Replacement

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The archives are a mess as everyone just tries to escape the worms alive.

Sasha clutched the tape recorder to her chest. She should have been paying more attention, she shouldn’t have allowed herself to get separated from Elias. He hadn’t even managed to tell her where the manual release was, she just had to hope he got it.

Had to hope he got to it in time.

She wanted to head down to the archives, she wanted to find Tim and Michael and to make sure they were out, she wanted to storm down there and demand answers from the creature that once called itself Jane Prentiss.

She wanted to save Jon and Martin.

She wanted everyone to be safe, more than anything. She just wanted to know everyone was safe, and she wanted to understand why they had been put into danger in the first place.

She turned the corner, moving without thinking, just going wherever felt right. Just keeping on moving and hoping that she found someone.

She pulled the tape recorder closer to her chest and kept talking to it, explaining everything that had happened and everything that was happening, something to give Jon if he made it out. Not if, when. They were going to make it out.

They had to.

She continued walking, heading down corridors that seemed so familiar to her, yet so changed, part of her surprised at how normal they looked, despite what she knew they contained.

She could hear worms behind her, the sound of wriggling and squirming, the sound of the tidal wave or worms, chasing after her, a tsunami she had no way to escape.

She started running.

Her eyes fixed on a door. She didn’t want to go in there, but she knew it would be her only way out of this mess. She knew they would get her if she didn’t hide in there. She had to, no matter how much her mind was screaming at her to stop, to leave.

She ignored the warning on the door and pushed it open, shrinking in on herself as her eyes settled on the all too familiar walls of artefact storage. She looked around, her eyes fixing on the recently delivered table in the centre of the room.

She tore her eyes off of it and moved to the back corner, keeping her eyes fixed on her door, though she still caught herself looking down at that hypnotic table.

\-------

Michael was running. He was just running. He didn’t know where, just anywhere that didn’t lead towards those worms. Anywhere he thought he might be safe.

So, of course, with his luck, he ran into Elias.

He spun around the corner, all too aware of the sound of worms behind him, and his eyes fixed on Elias, stood at the end of the corridor, holding a lever, yet not pulling it. Not yet.

He would rather anyone to Elias, but Elias was better than running from the worms alone, so he still ran up to him, constantly glancing back, hoping he wouldn’t see any worms round the corner behind him.

He was starting to really hate the Corruption.

Elias didn’t look up at him, but he didn’t need to. He knew Michael was there, and Michael knew enough that he didn’t need to pretend to look up at him.

As Michael got closer, he could see a sign above the level. Manual CO2 release. He sighed in relief. They could kill Prentiss. They could save everyone.

Then why was Elias hesitating?

Was something wrong in the archives? Elias could see what was going on there, right? What was going on? Was everyone okay? Were they even still alive?

Michael felt Elias’s eyes on him, glaring in annoyance. Was he doing something wrong? Should he leave? Or was he ruining one of Elias’s plans?

Elias sighed, pulling down on the lever.

The scream that followed caused Michael to double over, hands covering his ears. He had heard impossible sounds before, but that wasn’t what was wrong with the sound. It was so… human, and so pained, that, for a moment, he almost felt guilty about having to kill Prentiss.

The scream stopped and he glanced at Elias, who looked satisfied, if slightly annoyed. He hoped that was a good thing, that it meant everyone was okay.

He turned and sprinted down to the archives.

\-------

Everyone was curled up together, wrapped in blankets and clutching mugs of tea, warm and sweet.

Police officers walked past them, heading down into the tunnels and coming back up carrying crates full of tapes and statements. Cleaners ran about, clearing up the worms that littered the floor.

Michael glanced at Tim, who sat there, still slightly high from the CO2, and covered in worm holes. Apparently, he hadn’t spotted the note in time.

Sasha hadn’t asked yet why Michael hadn’t stayed.

The Distortion hadn’t shown up since Michael had seen it. It probably thought there wasn’t much point to being seen by all the people who were swarming the archives. It, of course, may also be trying to avoid the scary looking hunter who was prowling the archives, looking for her prey.

Michael really hoped that it wouldn’t end up being him.

He pulled the blanket closer around him, sipping his tea slowly. Jon had already dragged them each away to give their “statements”. Michael still hadn’t figured out if he was okay with feeding the Eye. But he did anyway. He knew it would help Jon, so he could deal with it, just once.

So, all he had to do now was sit there and try not to stare at the hunter or spend too much time searching the walls for magically appearing doors.

He was tired. So tired.

It all felt so… satisfying. Unfinished. He knew Jane Prentiss was dead, she had been taken away and was going to be burnt. The worms were dead, their carcasses covering the floor like a silver carpet. It was over, but it didn’t feel like it. It felt like there was more he needed to do.

Elias still looked at him like he was in the way, a roadblock.

Michael was too tired to really care.

So, he stayed there, sat next to Sasha and Martin, holding his tea, wrapped up in his blanket, unable to stop himself from worrying that there was more to come.

\------

The Distortion smiled, probably. Even he wasn’t sure. He didn’t know how to feel. To be happy or to be sad, or to be emotionless, as it knew it was supposed to be, to be as it should.

He sat, curled up in its tunnels, watching the archives carefully. It would have gone to taunt them, if it hadn’t have been for all the people there, that hunter in particular.

Not to mention the newest addition to the archive’s staff.

It would have laughed, if it could remember how. A creature of the Strange, of the unknown and the uncanny, living as a servant of Beholding, of the known and the ever watching eyes.

It would certainly provide a nice show.

He could already see the changes its presence was making. He could see the way Jon looked around nervously, the way paranoia had already started to seep into him, the way the hunter sniffed at the air, knowing something was off, but unable to figure out where the strange smell came from.

The rest of the archives staff just sat there, ignorant to the change.

The Distortion sighed, looking away from the archives. They weren’t going to do anything other than brew in their suspicion. Better not give them something obvious to be suspicious about. More fun to watch their ignorance and confusion.

It glanced at the confused man, aimlessly wandering the corridors, mind unable to process the strangeness of his surroundings.

It was going to need to find a better meal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry about how bad this chapter is, I'm really not good at writing this kind of stuff. Also, sorry that its short, I just want to try and get through the worm attack so I can get on with the rest of the story.
> 
> But, I have a lot of stuff planned, which will involve having to try and write about the Distortion more.


	10. Missing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Something is wrong with the Distortion

Something was wrong. That he was sure of. Maybe.

The colours swam in his vision, spinning and distorting as he moved his head, spinning faster and faster, even when he stayed still. He closed his eyes and saw them imprinted onto the back of his eyelids, still spinning and spiraling.

He might have been in a corridor. Sometimes the colours shifted into something that might have been a room. He tried to step forward, foot almost falling through the soft floor, his body bending with it, convulsing and shifting to support his weight.

He tried not to look at his body, knowing the swirling colours would cover him too. He was trapped, he knew that, yet he still saw doors. Doors he knew would let him out if he could just reach them, yet the maybe rooms stretched and bent until he was falling upwards, away from the doors that could give him his freedom.

The Distortion pushed the door open, stepping out into the tunnels. It didn’t want to travel them. The curiosity it had felt before had been replaced by a cold, hard determination.

So, it did what it always did. It watched and waited for its chance.

The trapdoor to the tunnels was opened and it watched a figure step inside. It stood there, watching as the person scanned the tunnels, heading down one to the Distortion’s right, disappearing into the complex maze of dirt passages.

It watched, waiting for the urge to follow, but it never came. Instead, looking deeper into those tunnels, it felt something a person may have seen as panic. But the Distortion did not recognise it, did not feel it.

Yet, it turned away from the dark and endless passages, stepping back through it's door to a wave of relief and deep, unrestrained fear.

\-------

Michael was glad when the Distortion never appeared.

He got into work, scanning the walls for the door he expected to be there, but they remained blank. Nothing.

Everyone else arrived, he drank the tea Martin made him, he went about his work, reading statements and doing any follow up he could, he went out to lunch, joked around with Tim, visited the library with Sasha, continued follow up, recorded a statement or two.

And nothing happened.

He pulled on his coat, ready to go home again, smiling slightly to himself. A normal day. Just doing his job, not worrying about an impossible monster appearing to wrap itself around his desk, to peer over his shoulder and watch him, a hunter stalking their prey.

Tim stopped him to ask him to after work drinks, and he agreed.

He went out with his coworkers, except for Jon of course, who had narrowed his eyes and thought for a moment before refusing. He had sat around and joked, and had been able to forget about the supernatural for a few hours, without worrying it was going to suddenly pop up.

A completely normal day.

He went home and went to sleep, eyes fixed on the blank, unchanging walls.

And it made him nervous.

Did it have something planned? Or was it just focusing on other victims? There had to be a reason, right? This couldn’t be good.

On his walk to work, he kept scanning every wall he could see, hoping and dreading seeing that off yellow door there. His eyes kept sweeping over to the faces of the people he passed, and their hands, looking for those impossibly bright eyes and those large, pointed hands.

Nothing.

It took about a week for him to get used to the idea. The idea that it wasn’t following him, that he didn’t have to worry about the Distortion suddenly appearing to taunt him. He didn’t fully understand why it had left, but he didn’t question it.

Maybe, for a while, he could have something resembling a normal life.

That idea didn’t take long for him to warm to.

A normal life. Where he could ignore that chattering in the back of his mind. Where he could just live, not afraid of something appearing to take it all away from him.

He looked down at the statement in his hands and, just for a moment, he could convince himself that nothing in it was real. That there were no such thing as monsters under the bed and ghosts and impossible creatures and unending hallways.

“Michael,” Jon called across the room, a tape recorder in his hands, a woman stood there with him, dark eyes scanning him, “get back to work.”

Though not having the Distortion covering him did mean it was more obvious when his mind drifted.

“Oh, right. Sorry.”

Well, it wasn’t exactly a normal work life. He glanced back up at the woman who followed Jon into his office. The hunter’s partner, Basira Hussain. At least the hunter wasn’t there. He wasn’t sure how she’d react if she managed to get a good sniff of him, but he wasn’t keen on finding out.

“Hey, what do you think she’s here for?” Tim sat on Michael’s desk, statement forgotten in his hands.

“Probably police work?” Tim was sat on the statement Michael had been about to start on.

Tim smirked and Michael internally groaned. He wasn’t too keen on Tim’s way of gossiping. Tim had figured this out, so he usually went to Sasha, but she was out doing follow up. Not to mention, she had been different since the attack.

It wasn’t much, she just drifted off more and was more curious. And there was something in the way she looked at everyone. Like they were hiding something and she had to know what it was.

Or, sometimes, like she already knew what it was.

“But she always goes for Jon. Recon there’s something going on there?” Tim’s face made it clear what he thought.

Michael shrugged, not meeting Tim’s eyes. “I don’t know. Maybe she just suspects him? I, well, Jon is kind of… suspicious?”

Tim snorted and Michael felt his face heat up.

“N-no, I just mean that, uh, I don’t think he, I don’t, um, Jon wouldn’t, well, y-you know, uh…” Michael covered his face with his hands, trying to ignore Tim’s laugh.

“Can you two please be quiet?” Jon shouted, sticking his head out of his office, glaring at Tim, still perched on Michael’s desk.

“Sure thing, Boss!”

Michael gave Jon a quick thumbs up, then tried to shoo Tim off of his desk with mixed success.

\------

It might have been sleep, if the Distortion was able to sleep. Maybe it was, it had never tried, until now.

It was exhausted.

It curled up inside its corridors, eyes unfocused as it looked at its impossible self. It knew that Michael must have caused it. Though it still didn’t understand. Not that it cared about that. It was a creature of the Spiral, it wasn’t supposed to understand.

But it still wanted to. Or maybe Michael did. It couldn’t really tell the difference any more. And it still didn’t understand why.

Perhaps it was something to do with that pull it felt in its gut, or where its gut would be, trying to pull it to where it knew Michael was. Was that from it or from Michael? Which of them wanted the other, and why?

It's not like either of them were able to help.

Help with what? Maybe Michael would be able to help with the bone deep exhaustion. Humans dealt with that stuff, so he would probably know how to help. Not that he would.

Was tiredness supposed to hurt like that?

Like it was slowly ripping his very being apart, like his very nature was being forced out of him.

Like he was being slowly but surely taken away from everything that made him himself.

It didn’t know. It wanted to, though. More than anything, it wanted to know and it wanted to understand, yet those very urges may be the thing that made his very being hurt.

The corridor before it shifted and it saw figures before it. Figures that it recognised as those it had killed long ago, though their faces shifted like the walls around them.

He closed his eyes, not wanting to look at them, and tried to ignore the sounds of their footsteps approaching him. It waved its hand, trying to banish the figure it knew it must be creating, yet he could still hear them, slowly and quickly approaching.

It reached to the side, his hand hitting a door. He didn’t think, it just stood, leaving through the door, leaving its own corridors. Leaving the place it had suddenly seen as unsafe.


	11. Suspicion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Who needs mental stability when you have paranoia?

Navigating the dark room was more difficult than she had expected. It almost seemed like boxes and statements would just appear out of nowhere and she was constantly tripping over, hoping that no one could hear her, despite knowing the building was completely abandoned at that time of night.

She dodged a desk she could have sworn she had walked into back by the door, not even bothering to look at the statements on it. She knew none of them were what she was after. She needed something else.

It took a while, but she managed to find the door she was after. She pushed it open, stepping into Jon’s office, glancing around, hoping he wasn’t still there. His bad habit of staying late was the only reason she hadn’t done this earlier.

But, today, she had seen him being forced out of the building by Martin and Michael, who had both decided that Jon needed to learn what self care was. She wouldn’t be surprised if one of them started bringing him packed lunches.

She wasn’t sure why, but she was certain the two of them had agreed to try and bully Jon into taking care of himself.

Tim found the whole thing hilarious, but had agreed to keep an eye on him.

He wasn’t in. Which she was very thankful for as she started to search through his desk, opening each drawer and systematically taking everything out, hoping she would be able to put it back as it had been.

She found a few tapes and a tape recorder. She checked the door, listening for footsteps before playing the tapes.

The first was the Basira’s statement who had been hanging about recently. She wasn’t surprised at any of it, the statement was exactly how she had expected it to be. Just a basic statement about her encounter with a strange man.

Then, she played the next one.

It seemed to be the same. The same statement, recorded twice, though she wasn’t sure why Jon would have recorded it on two separate tapes. Unless he was planning on keeping one for himself and putting one into the archives?

Until it got to the end of the statement. She heard the other tape recorder click off, yet Jon kept talking. A supplemental.

She grabbed a piece of scrap paper from the desk and one of Jon’s pens, trying to quickly scribble down a transcript of the supplemental. She could look into it more later, try and figure out what he was doing.

From the sound of it though, there were more tapes, more supplementals. She searched the rest of his desk, but found nothing. No more statements, or tapes of anything. He must have had somewhere to hide them, but why hadn’t that tape been hidden with them?

Had he not had time, or was there another reason?

She scanned the drawer she had found that tape in again, and found a strange clump of cobwebs in the back corner. Jon had always been careful when it came to spiders, he would have destroyed the web as soon as he found it. So was it new, or had he just not noticed it?

It looked like too many to have gotten there since Basira made her statement, but she had heard and seen enough things that she knew that meant nothing.

Either way, she placed the tapes back, tucking her new transcript into her pocket and leaving the archives as quietly as she had entered.

\-------

Sasha was focused on her work when Michael came in. Jon was in his office, or Michael presumed he was, as he could hear talking coming from inside.

He sighed. Jon needed to stop coming in so early.

He smiled at Sasha, who gave him a smile back, though there was a look in her eyes that made his skin crawl. He had to briefly pause and try to figure out if he had done something wrong, but he couldn’t think of anything. That didn’t get rid of the feeling though.

He took a deep breath, calming himself as he sat down at his desk. He didn’t remember the pile of statements there, but figured that they had been put there for him to follow up on. Jon probably put them there. Michael’s desk was closest to his office, so tended to be the dumping place for statements he wanted looking into.

That was, until he spotted the marks, dancing around on the paper.

Jon wasn’t the one to put them there.

He carefully picked it up, as though scared it would cut him. He held it up between his thumb and index finger, scanning the front. It was just plain brown, a pale beige with a slight spot of darker paper in one of the corners. A stain that looked a little too red for his tastes. He could see the marks on it, even more clearly now, though he knew they weren’t really there.

The marks of the Spiral and the Stranger, vying for position on the paper.

He flipped it over and saw a dark shape, the same colour as the red tinged stain on the front. The shape of a palm, with four, long, pointed shapes jutting out of it. Fingers, and he knew exactly what they belonged to.

He dropped the file and it fell to the ground, papers cascading out of it and covering the floor around his desk in a layer of white and the glossy shine of polaroid photos. It took him a second to recognise Gertrude’s handwriting, neatly covering some of the paper, as well as the unfamiliar scrawl he still recognised as that of a panicked statement giver.

He slowly picked them up, scanning each item as he did. Statements of at least three separate people. Letters between Gertrude and someone called Adelard Dekker. Various other notes. Photos of seemingly random people, about half of which were polaroids, some of them seemed to be wrongly labelled. And photos of a table that seemed to pull you in as you looked at it, the same one Michael knew now sat in artefact storage.

And, finally, a note in very large, messy handwriting that seemed to break off at random points, spinning off into shapes Michael knew must be fractals, that really shouldn’t have been legible, but simply read “See the Stranger, hiding in plain sight”.

On instinct, his head shot up and he scanned the archives for a door, but saw nothing out of the ordinary. Well, other than the look Sasha gave him, clearly wondering what had caused his reaction.

It was at that point he realised he was hyperventilating.

In an instant, she seemed to appear by his side, her hand gently placed on his shoulder, a comforting smile on her face. She glanced down at the files covering the floor, eyes immediately fixing on the note.

She seemed to struggle to keep the panic out of her eyes as she looked back at Michael, scanning his face.

She seemed satisfied with what she saw, or at least it calmed her enough for her to begin picking up the rest of the papers, eyes scanning over everything as she went, her hand pausing over each statement as she seemed to fight the urge to take it with her. As she picked up the letters, she hesitated again, reading over Gertrude’s words.

Michael had forgotten they knew each other.

He didn’t really know much about their relationship. He knew Gertrude had wanted Sasha to be the next archivist, that she trusted her with the position, so that had to mean something. He wondered whether Sasha had known the truth about Gertrude, or if she had viewed her as the weak, innocent old woman Michael had once seen her as.

Did Sasha trust her? And would Gertrude have sacrificed her, given the chance? Or was her possible successor far too important for that?

Was anyone too important for her to sacrifice?

Michael certainly wasn’t.

Sasha held the file out to him and he grabbed it, perhaps a little more violently than he had intended, judging by the confusion and worry that flickered across Sasha’s face. He couldn’t quite bring himself to apologise, his mind too focused on the swirling fear in the back of his mind, muttering to him to do what he knew he never could do.

Muttering for him to create fear, to take Sasha and change her, shift her and sculpt her, the clay of her body bending in his own porcelain hands until she was the same as him. The same mess of almost human clay, baking under the sun of their God’s unseeing eyes.

He blinked, eyes fixing on the other figure now stood before him. When had Martin come over? He wasn’t surprised to see the mug held in his hands, slowly held out towards Michael, a strange almost smile on his face.

He took the cup, letting the warmth seep into his flaking bones.

From across the room, Jon watched them, eyes quickly focusing on the file, just sat there on Michael’s desk, everyone else’s eyes focused elsewhere. Jon wanted nothing more than to grab that folder, to see what had caused Michael’s extreme reaction, but he knew that, if he tried to take it, Michael or Sasha or someone would stop him.

Tim had also joined them now, cracking jokes to try and cheer Michael up, creating a wall of people around the small man’s desk. There was no way for Jon to get even close to the file before someone stopped him. He was going to have to wait until he could get to it.

For now, he had other things he could focus on.

Of all the archives staff, Michael was, by far, the most mysterious. He rarely talked about his past, especially anything to do with Gertrude, when he did, it was often contradictory and filled with inconsistencies. Sometimes, he would even just say he didn’t know something about his own past, even for more basic information. He seemed to struggle at remembering his own birthday.

There was also his strange relationship with the Distortion. It hadn’t shown up since the attack, but, when it had been there, it was always so taken with Michael, rarely paying any sort of attention to the others, and, when it did, it was always because Michael had left or was too busy focusing on something else.

Tim had joked about it being like a cat, but it really was just an overbearing pet. Or perhaps a small child, though Jon suspected it was older than any of them.

He shut the door to his office, sitting down at his desk and turning to his computer. He needed to find what info he could on Michael. He had been one of Gertrude’s assistants, her only one, maybe. He had to know something about her death, something he wasn’t telling him about. There had to be something.

Unfortunately, the information that he could find was as confusing as Michael’s descriptions of his past.

He found three separate birth certificates, each with different parents and dates, though all of them seemed to belong to the Michael Shelley he knew. He also found multiple drivers licenses, each with a different birth date, all of which were different to the birth certificates. Though they all had the same photo, which was very clearly the right Michael Shelley.

He even found several death certificates, all as confusing as everything else he found. One even had Michael’s death recorded as two years in the future, another had it marked as the day of Prentiss’s attack, another had some seemingly random day in 2009, as well as the place of death being marked as some place in Russia, which he searched up, only to find out that Zemlya Sannikova did not exist.

Looking at institute records, he was hired either during the 1990’s or in 2003. The reports for him seemed to be completely random, some didn’t even have writing on them, just a strange pattern covering the paper. Though, a couple did mention him not showing up for work for months on end, possibly years, though the contradictory nature of them made it impossible to tell anything else.

Jon sighed, staring down at his desk. He had learnt absolutely nothing. He couldn’t even say how old Michael was or anything about his past, only that it was a mess of contradictory paperwork and that he was, apparently, legally dead three times over.

Jon wasn’t surprised to realise he had started to double check everything. He knew that there was no way he had read everything correctly. Maybe he just needed more sleep. He hadn’t been sleeping much, spending too much time down in the tunnels, hunting for… something, he wasn’t sure what. Not yet.

Right, that must be it. His sleep deprived mind was just struggling to read it, or was just recalling everything wrong. But, no, he checked again, and everything lined up exactly with what he had read before. None of the dates had changed, none of the places, nothing, but it was all still connected back to the same Michael Shelley who was sitting at his desk in the next room, hopefully, getting on with his work.

The same Michael Shelley who had panicked so much, reading that file that Jon still wanted, needed, to read.

The same Michael Shelley who had just rocketed to the top of his suspect list.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I'll start trying to stick to some sort of update schedule, since it's just been random so far. I'll try for weekly, though that might impact the chapter length, though I guess they are quite short already.


End file.
